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Submitted to: Journal of Microbiological Methods
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 12/17/2002 Publication Date: 5/14/2003 Citation: BUYER, J.S. IMPROVED FAST GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY FOR FAME ANALYSIS OF BACTERIA. JOURNAL OF MICROBIAL METHODS. 2003. VOL. 54. P. 117-120. Interpretive Summary: Many problems in microbiology require that bacteria be identified. For example, bacteria that suppress plant disease need to be thoroughly characterized before they can be released into the environment. Many laboratories identify bacteria is by gas chromatographic analysis of the fatty acids that are present in the lipids of bacterial membranes. The Microbial Identification System (Microbial ID, Inc., Newark, DE) is the only commercially available system for this purpose. We previously developed modifications to the system that speed analysis three-fold while still allowing the preexisting databases of fatty acids and bacteria to be used. In this paper we show that the time required for gas chromatography can be nearly halved compared to our previous method. This may be useful for rapid identification of large numbers of bacteria in a clinical or environmental laboratory. Technical Abstract: Bacteria are frequently identified by fatty acid analysis. We previously reported on methods to speed up sample preparation and gas chromatography, resulting in greatly improved speed and throughput (Buyer, 2002). In this paper we demonstrate that further reductions in chromatographic retention times are readily achieved, leading to faster identification of bacteria. |
